What has to be true for your strategy to be true?
In tests I’ve done we consistently found 70–90% of assumptions underlying strategic decisions were unaccounted for / unknown. Identifying those assumptions gave teams a roadmap for what questions to ask, experiments to run and insights to collect. It was an effective way of sparking a team’s curiosity and propelling it forward.
Asking “what would have to be true for this to be true?” Is “the most valuable questions in strategy” according to Roger Martin (1).
Martin argues this question:
- Helps Decompose Analysis into Logic and Data
- Helps Focus on Creating the Future
- Helps You Evaluate Your Strategy on an Ongoing basis
This is how it worked in the teams I collaborated with:
A. We brought teams into the room, asked them to put their strategy on the board and statement by statement ask: “what has to be true for this statement to be true”? (we focused on three core statements from each strategy)
B. Teams are good at this, we got lists of between 5 and 25 assumptions per statement.
C. Then we did a quick grouping and prioritization exercise (2) in order to make the assumptions manageable.
D. With a prioritized list of assumptions we simply asked: “do we have the data to confirm this or is anyone not 100% sure it is true?”
Assumptions where we didn’t have the data or where not everyone was absolutely certain got marked as an assumption which needed to be checked.
Sometimes we experienced big aha-moments in the teams as they realized that assumptions they’ve always took for granted had no proof to them. E.g. I especially remember one team with an established belief that customers had a long time trust in their brand in the category, but no-one had ever seen any data proving it to be true.
During this step we consistently found that 70–90% of assumptions underlying strategic decisions were unaccounted for / unknown (giving a risk ration of 70–90%).
E. This list of prioritized unaccounted for assumptions (by some called the “riskiest assumptions” (3)) now served as a shopping list of questions to ask and answer.
I’ve often found teams keep asking the same questions over and over again (4) (not by conscious intention, but by auto-pilot, lack of inspiration or lack of direction). With this assumptions based approach we tapped into the expertise and knowledge of the teams and in a plain and direct way helped them articulate their own most important questions to ask. They broke with the preconceived questions and found their own unique path to insights.
NB! This is important: to many of the processes we use don’t take advantage of the available expertise and experience in the room. We autopilot our teams into limited biased views of our categories making us similar to everyone else. This method opens and takes advantage of the team to get a more unique and competitive (I would argue) approach.
F. The team then identifies how they would answer their questions. And they would choose everything from running new experiments, checking new or existing data sources, online literature analysis, research, interviews etc.. With very specific and limited questions to ask answers were often collected in a week or two.
G. And answering these questions brought new, fresh insights to the teams. Nudging, altering or pivoting them to better ideas and solutions.
Sometimes questioning what you think you already know gives you easy access to better questions and better answers. It’s an effective way of removing uncertainties and feeling more positive and in control of a complicated or complex environment.
In my experience asking “what would have to be true” and learning the teams (strategy) risk ratio (e.g. 70–90%), is giving the team a map of what questions are most important to ask. It increases the clarity and the focus of the team leading to new answers and insights making people more enthusiastic and engaged in the work that is being done.
The risk ratio is a positive tool to help give the team clarity, direction, belief and guidance.
Links and sources:
(1). https://rogermartin.medium.com/what-would-have-to-be-true-83dac5bd2189
(2). https://medium.com/design-bootcamp/prioritization-dont-overthink-it-cf77507fcd09
(3). https://hackernoon.com/the-mvp-is-dead-long-live-the-rat-233d5d16ab02
(4). https://uxdesign.cc/curiosity-eats-creativity-for-breakfast-03e96dc74996
